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I would greatly appreciate some help please :)

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Hello, firstly id like to ay how interesting this forum is, i can feel my mind slowly expanding the more i read! ,

now,

im am on a search for books/writings/poetry/authors, who write about life/people/society in a Philosophical/analytical mannor. Hopefully not through rose tinted glasses, so a negative outlook would be great Smile

, the books that i come across all 'explain philosophy' but i would like some poetry to read or books with a philosophical/analytical style to them, talking on life/people in general

can you good people suggest some authors, or types of books that i should be looking for? . i search in google ' philosophy books' and they all seem tos sort be educational. Im sure their must be famous poets/writers that write on life from a negative viewpoint. sorry to be so negative Smile

, i just find this sort of thing interesting.

i may not be talking about Philosophy altogether, perhaps just creative writings or thought provoking writings on us!

i am new to this sort of thing as you can probably tell. So i cant really explain what i mean to well. sorry, i hope someone gets the jist of what im trying to say.

any poets/authors to check out would be great.

Thanks in advance,

Sam . :a-ok:

---------- Post added 07-03-2009 at 10:55 AM ----------

or even just a few books to check out, with a dark analytical view on life... dont worry , im not a goth or emo haha. im trying to write thi sort of thing my self, and would like to see other similar writings.

@Ethix,

Robert Lowell and T. S. Eliot, set some good peotry, I would like to consider Edward Said a philosopher, though mostly. he would believe he simply mitigated why others were afraid, to accept the truth. There are numerous Greek classics of which I am sure you have heard there names, simply google Greek classical writers and they will appear.

You may wish to wait for the attention of others, who may recomend a more modern approach or advice about fields of philosophy. A certain field may grab your attention.

@Ethix,

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaardner covers alot of ground in a lot of things including philosphy and has a pretty weird story woven into it aswell.
Notes on the Underground by F.M. Dostoevsky is pretty dark. I enjoyed both.

@Ethix,

In most great poetry there is some philosophy lurking in the rhythms and rimes, as with most great novels, for that matter. Often the philosophic themes or positions are implicit or if explicit are extremely veiled.

Confining myself to recent writers, I would suggest Camus, Sartre, and Hesse. The first two are philosophers in their own right that have used literature to illustrate their philosophy. In all three, philosophical ideas play throughout their literary works in a very pleasing way.
Regards,
John

I should suggest, now that I think about it, the poetry of Tennyson (Maud, Idylls of the King) and of course our own Whitman and Robert Frost, although you have probably read them already.

@Ethix,

Welcome Ethix! My recommendation would be Walter Russell. That link is to a book we've placed online as an introduction however, the best is the Home Study Course which deals with the philosophy of humankind so it's a bit off the traditional and historical philosophy but can be some of the most enlightening and profitable reading one can read. Walter Russell was a poet, musician, artist, scuplter, philosopher, scientist and a general master of the arts and sciences and gained the respect of Nikola Tesla. There's a lot of reading of various articles from his books on that site but the Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe is a great introduction to let you know if you want to read more of his stuff.

Great having you on the forum and hope some of this has helped.

@Justin,

well , thankyou all for your replys. i will look in to all writers tonight and over the weekend and see if i like what i read. and this should open doors to similar writers. i didnt expect so many replys, thankyou all again.

@Ethix,

I would suggest Albert Schweitzer's writings on the reverence for life in "Philosophy of Culture." Albert Schweitzer was an early 20th century theologian, accomplished musician, author, and medical doctor. Raised by devout parents, Albert completed his theological studies and was quite accomplished in this regard, publishing several books which are still held in very high reference among academic theologians (like Quest for Historical JesusPhilosophy of Culture: The World View of Reverence for Life." "Reverence for life" essentially says that that there is a constant will to live which is innate within us. This notion binds everything together, from ants to humans. Life is what binds all of us together within the sphere of an intense will to live. But because we are human (the only creature to be aware of this awesome truth), and we understand that some things in life, such as killing a cow to eat it or pulling up a plant to devour it, are inevitable as part of our will to live. We take careful responsibility for every bite we eat and so on because those things too had a will to live and we know full well the repercussions for obtaining our own sustenance and also maintaining a reverence for life. Here is a wonderful excerpt I found detailing how Albert discovered his own reverence for life;

Philosophy of Culture;74550 wrote:

"For months on end I lived in a continual state of mental excitement. Without the least success I let my thoughts be concentrated, even all through my daily work at the hospital, on the connection between a positive view of the world and ethics. All that I had learnt from philosophy about ethics left me in the lurch. I felt like a man who has to build a new and better boat to replace a rotten one that's no longer seaworthy, but does not know how to begin. I was wandering about in a thicket in which no path was to be found. I was leaning with all my might against an iron door which would not yield.

"While in this mental condition I had to undertake a longish journey on the river... to visit Madame Pelot, the ailing wife of a missionary, at N'Gomo, about 160 miles upstream. The only means of conveyance I could find was a small steamer, towing an over-laden barge, which was on the point of starting. Except myself, there were only Africans on board, but among them was Emil Ogouma, my friend from Lambarene. Since I had been in too much of a hurry to provide myself with enough food for the journey, they let me share the contents of their cooking pot.

"Slowly we crept upstream, laboriously feeling - it was the dry season - for the channels between the sandbanks. Lost in thought I sat on the deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal conception of the ethical which I had not discovered in any philosophy. Sheet after sheet I covered with disconnected sentences, merely to keep myself concentrated on the problem. Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase, "Reverence for Life." The iron door had yielded: the path in the thicket had become visible".

To be honest, this is perhaps one of my earliest exposures to philosophy so many years ago. There was this series called The Young Indiana Jones ChroniclesCongo, January 1917: Oganga, the giver and taker of life) featured Albert Schweitzer. It was fantastic, speaking from the perspective of a kid who barely knew anything about philosophy. Come to think of it, the whole thing may actually be on youtube.

YouTube - Young Indiana Jones and Albert Schweitzer (1)
YouTube - Young Indiana Jones and Albert Schweitzer (2)
YouTube - Young Indiana Jones and Albert Schweitzer (3)

@Ethix,

Douglas Noel Adams wrote some great books (if not many nor long) filled with a overall negative (his best series of books start with earth exploding) and humorous view of life. Special attention to the "Hitch Hiker's guide to the galaxy", his best series of books.

@manored,

manored;74602 wrote:

Douglas Noel Adams wrote some great books (if not many nor long) filled with a overall negative (his best series of books start with earth exploding) and humorous view of life. Special attention to the "Hitch Hiker's guide to the galaxy", his best series of books.

Yes these books are absolutely great, I highly recommend them.

@Ethix,

Ethix;74536 wrote:

well , thankyou all for your replys. i will look in to all writers tonight and over the weekend and see if i like what i read. and this should open doors to similar writers. i didnt expect so many replys, thankyou all again.

I think you should not miss reading, "Language, Truth, and Logic" by A. J. Ayer. His opening sentence in the book is something you should find intriguing: It is,

THE traditional disputes of philosophers are as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question the purpose and method of philosophical enquiry. This is not necessarily a difficult task.

@kennethamy,

A list of books worth reading for their address of philosophy, no particular order:

Notes from the Underground - Dostoevsky
The Stranger - Camus
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Six Characters in Search of an Author - Pirandello
Things Fall Apart - Achebe
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Thompson
Death in Venice - Thomas Man
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - Nietzsche
The Odyssey and The Illiad - Homer
The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
Nectar in a Sieve - Markandaya
The Jungle - Sinclair
Death of a Salesman - Miller
Howl - Ginsberg
Leaves of Grass - Whitman
Walden - Thoreau
Huckleberry Finn - Twain
Snows of Kilimanjaro - Hemingway
Heda Gabler - Ibsen
Siddhartha - Hesse

You really can't go wrong with Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Checkov, Faulkner, Ezra Pound, ee cummings, WC Williams, Camus, Twain. I also recomend Stephen Crane, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut, Sylvia Plath, and Raymond Carver.

It sounds as though you are asking for great literature. If so, the names are pretty well enshrined. You might also check Moliere, Zola, Rousseau, William Blake, Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson.

That should you keep you busy for quite a while. The above names still have me busy.

@Didymos Thomas,

thanks all, i have so much reading to get into !!

im looking for dark / negative style writing poetry, so ill hunt throu these authors and see what i can find . Smile

@Ethix,

Oooh, definitely Baudelaire. Start there if you want dark. He's a perfect fit for dark poetry.

Baudelaire
Baudelaire

Sylvia Plath, too. She's as dark as they come.

@Ethix,

I'd add the following to DT's list:

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky
Death and the Dervish by Mesa Selimovic
Independent People by Halldor Laxness
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Sea of Fertility by Yukio Mishima
(the above is a cycle of four novels: Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel)
Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe

@Aedes,

No idea why I didn't put C&P on the list. That is a great one.

I thought about recommending books, like Moby Dick, but decided to stick with works I've actually read. From what I know of those books in Aedes' list, they should be perfect.

@Ethix,

If I had to pick one book by Dostoyevsky, it would be Karamazov -- which may be the most perfect book ever written. Not many people know of the series by Mishima, but had he not committed ritual suicide the day he finished The Decay of the Angel, he would have won the Nobel Prize.

And yet fewer people know of Death and the Dervish by Selimovic, it's one of the most ridiculously great existential novels ever written.

@Aedes,

The Mishima is that good? I'll have to add it to the list. Or maybe just start ignoring you until I get through the stack I'm already planning to read (which includes Karamazov).

@Ethix,

The Mishima is better than you can possibly imagine. It's as good as anything written by Dostoyevsky -- and this is coming from a Dostoyevsky devotee.

The first book, Spring Snow, is great unto itself, but you don't really get to understand what is happening until you start to read the second book.

In brief, it's the story of a man named Honda, who is just a boy in the first book (and an old man in the last), who in the first book witnesses what happens to a dark, doomed friend of his. In each successive book, Honda, who is a sort of logical person, becomes increasingly convinced beyond his belief that he's identified the reincarnation of his friend from the first book (a different person in each book). This realization rocks him and becomes an utter obsession.

Without saying more, let me add that the psychological insight and the poetry of Mishima's writing is peerless. And the conclusion of this cycle of novels, the very end in the last few pages of the last book, is so patiently approached, so delicately written, and so completely unanticipated, that it shakes your own understanding of what's happened to that point.

What more can I say. It stands with Ulysses and Karamazov in my top 3.

By the way -- add the Selimovic to your list too. And Moby Dick, but we've talked about that elsewhere.

@Aedes,

If you like contemporary, House of Leaves is darker than any of the above mentioned. Promise.

@Ethix,

For dark poetry, Plath is great and I'd also recommend Rilke.

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I would greatly appreciate some help please :)

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